Why our Medical Massage Clinic has Kinesiologists

The Short Story of why our Medical Massage clinic has Kinesiologists

This is the short version of why we have Kinesiologists, for the long version see more below.

For many injuries proper recovery involves a combination of manual therapy and active rehabilitation. Sure, you could go to a “Jack of all trades” who does both manual and active therapy but at our clinic we ask “Why go to a Jack of all trades when you could go to a pair of Aces instead?”

A Pair of Aces

Registered Massage Therapists (RMTs) are highly trained with manual therapies, but generally don’t implement extensive active rehabilitation programs. Imagine this: one day you come in for a “massage” and your RMT leads you to a gym and then proceeds to make you exercise for an hour – you would probably find another RMT!

Kinesiologists are highly trained with active rehabilitation. They are very well suited for spending time in the gym with clients, but not so well suited to manual therapy. Imagine this: One day you are training with your Kinesiologist and instead of training with you they have you lay down on a mat in the middle of the gym and massage your back for an hour – you would probably find another Kinesiologist!

Stronger Together

So why do we believe in the Massage Therapy – Kinesiology combination? Because we believe that by focusing on the strength of our therapists we can provide a stronger and more effective way to meet your goals.

The detailed story: Why do we have Kinesiologists at KMM?

Why do we have Kinesiologists at KMM?

The story of why we have Kinesiologists here is simple. When we first opened our doors, we had a strong focus on medical massage as the means to recovery from many issues. Our Massage Therapists would use manual techniques combined with therapeutic exercises, stretches and other homecare to get results. And get results is what we did. Things were going very well for almost all of our clients.

Results with most clients

Over time our massage therapists noticed that with a few of our clients progress would be slower than what we would expect and a few others would initially get better and then regress. We would adjust our treatments, therapeutic exercises and homecare, but for some clients something was still missing. After a bit of investigating the cause became very clear.

Exercise!

We noticed that most people who weren’t getting the results that we would expect from massage treatments were struggling with the exercises that we were giving them. With some clients we realized that old movement patterns were holding them back and preventing them from doing exercises properly. We would show clients exercises one week and a week later would ask them to show us how they were doing them and would see bad movement patterns recur and no matter how often we showed them proper form, they just weren’t able to keep up with it. For other clients finding time for exercise was holding them back from recovery. We would show them all the exercises, they would understand them, yet each week we would check in with them and inevitably the exercises weren’t getting done, either the client forgot to do them or simply had a “busy week”. Some clients would do the exercises very well initially and slowly get lax with them, doing them less often and with improper form. Inevitably these clients would start to regress and we would have to go over all of the exercises again with renewed focus.

Eureka!

Eventually it became crystal clear what we needed to help these clients recover. We needed someone to guide them in their exercise programs. Someone to show them how to exercise properly and monitor them while they are exercising to make sure that proper form is maintained. We needed someone to tell them how often to exercise and motivate them to do it.

But who?

We initially looked at many options. After surveying clients it became clear that while some health professionals would give exercises, very few would actually watch the client perform the exercises more than once or twice. Personal trainers, although they can be a good fit for some people, are generally not trained to properly deal with those in need of rehabilitation. And then there were kinesiologists.

Kinesiolo…what?

Ok, we admit it. When we first heard the word, we thought it too. Kinesiolo…what? Although Massage Therapists are trained health professionals and cover kinesiology related topics in school, we were still a bit foggy on what they actually did. So how did we hear about them? From our clients.

Client recommended

While trying to solve the exercise problem, we asked clients if they had any good experiences working with anyone with exercise and a few times we heard the word “Kinesiologist”. And so, as all good health professionals do, we turned to wikipedia to explain what Kinesiology is.

Kinesiology definition

“Kinesiology, also known as human kinetics, is the scientific study of human movement. Kinesiology addresses physiological, mechanical, and psychological mechanisms. Applications of kinesiology to human health include biomechanics and orthopedics; strength and conditioning; sport psychology; methods of rehabilitation, such as physical and occupational therapy; and sport and exercise.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesiology) Thanks wikipedia.

Aftera bit more research we realized that this was exactly what we were looking for in our clinic and we starting looking for a good fit for our clinic. it didn’t take too long to find our first Kinesiologist (click here to read his bio). Since then we have seen great results and because of the great results and response from our clients, we have recently added a second Kinesiologist (click here to read her bio).

So why do we have Kinesiologists?

Kinesiologists assess, create treatment programs, monitor clients during their treatment programs, and make adjustments to programs as needed. In plain terms a Kinesiologist will tell you what you need to do to meet your exercise or recovery goal, show you how to do it, watch you to make sure you are doing it properly and motivate you to keep on track. Kinesiology is the ideal companion therapy for massage, and the massage and kinesiology combination is a powerhouse that can help you prevent and recover from injuries and keep you healthy.